I’m a full-time travel and drinks writer, contributing to newspapers, magazines, and websites in the UK and worldwide. In addition I’ve written over 40 guidebooks, one podcast, three radio plays, a collection of my travel writing (Snakes Alive) and a crime novel (Strip till Dead).

You can see my online portfolio with my latest travel and drinks stories at Contently.

I publish several travel content websites and two drinks websites, publish the Beyond Travel Guides, and divide my time between my homes in Cambridgeshire in the UK and near Tucson in Arizona.

Somewhere off the west coast of Scotland is a fishing trawler called the Crimson Arrow, and on the boat is a fisherman called Toastie. He brings his scallops into the harbour at Oban, and they are the best scallops in the world. How do I know? Because I’ve just eaten a plate of them.

In October 2014 Jesmond Dene House in Newcastle was chosen by the Good Hotel Guide 2015 as one of the best boutique city hotels in the UK. Having stayed there in September, I’m not at all surprised. Trying to find the hotel in a network of busy Newcastle roads, in our case during a rainy […]

Here’s a piece I did for the travel pages of The Times about the Cumbrian food tours run by Cumbria on a Plate. The excellent tours are led by Annette Gibbons, OBE, and the website is Cumbria on a Plate. :

With the new Bond movie, Spectre, due out soon, the Singapore Airlines magazine Priority sent me in search of the locations for this and some earlier Bond movies… and a few things Bond might like to do when he’s there.

‘If you can eat it, I’ll prepare it,’ chef Stephen Boswell tells me as we sit together and gaze out at the passing landscape of Skye. My profile of Stephen, working as a chef for the Majestic Line cruises off the west coast of Scotland..